Basically, this is opening the flood gates for nickel-and-diming microtransactions from the App Store. Before, when you spent $5 on a game, you knew you were getting the whole game—with free upgrades. Now, you’ll spend $5 on a game and you’ll need to spend another $5 to unlock all the levels and weapons. And that’s on legit apps. Just wait for the novelty fart apps with one fart sound that want you to pay for extras, or a flashlight app that wants you to pay for different colors.

This could easily turn tons and tons of apps into crippled trialware without consumers knowing, and it’s going to make developers hungry for the extra cash they can make by charging you for extra feature they would have included in the full version anyways. Like a game charging you $3 for fancy horse armor on the Xbox 360, but without the filter than comes from the huge budgetary requirements of Xbox 360 games, this is going to open the floodgates for the sleaziest app behaviors possible. The worst part of it is, there will be enough people willing to pay a little here and a little there to support this kind of behavior. But I for one, am out. Do not want. [Gizmodo’s iPhone 3.0 Coverage]

During these tough economic times, more families need to scrimp and save. But cutting back everywhere isn’t always the best course.

You and your family have to eat, house yourselves and stay healthy. Once you’ve taken care of the essentials, experts say there are additional areas that require real investment, whether you are spending time or money. Here are six places where it pays to lay out more money, not less:

So you’ve been downsized. Or you’ve bailed before being booted because you saw the writing on the wall. Or maybe you skipped the steady paycheck for a go at being a freelancer. Whatever the reason you’re out there on your own now, we’ve compiled a list of apps you’ll need to run your web-working business.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, just a sampling of the apps and solutions that we’ve blogged about in the past.

Here’s what the new web worker needs to get the job done well:

Backoffice

1. Invoice management

I can’t run my business without my Freshbooks, but there are many options out there for freelancers to manage invoices and track income and expenses. Some other options we’ve reviewed include:

While Freshbooks does have time tracking, I must confess I’m remiss with tracking my time with a tracker (and yes, even with my cute Freshbooks time tracking widget for Mac OSX). I’ve been a little better lately at guesstimating my time and logging it into my project management system (see No. 7 below), but need to get better at it to understand the profitability of my work projects. Some time tracking solutions we’ve blogged about in the past include:

I have to admit I’m the first to ignore anything that has an acronym. But if you spell it out — Customer Relationship Management — you can see that this is an essential part of building your web working business. I’ve always maintained customer contacts and relationships in an ad-hoc sort of way; now I wish I had started out on the right foot instead of having to backtrack and re-engineer my patchwork system into something more streamlined. Here are some CRM options that are affordable when you’re just starting out. Take a look at our past reviews for:

A good RSS reader is vital to stay on top of the news, blogs and articles that you need to read to stay on top of your game as a web worker. I am currently using Google Reader and occasionally play with Snackr. Here are some WebWorkerDaily posts offering tips for managing your RSS feeds:

Starting with a good email organization system and the right supplementary tools to manage your email communications is important. As your web work picks up and you juggle multiple projects, you’ll be grateful you set something up early that you are in the habit of using and that keeps your communications in order and easily accessible as needed. Here are some email tips, add-ons and apps we’ve discussed:

When it comes to video conferencing, I’m toggling between two solutions. Each one works well for me; which one I choose often depends on the other user. Skype was my free long distance call solution for aeons, but now I often turn to Google Talk with video as a quick and easy solution, because it is totally integrated into my Gmail and I don’t have to launch Skype. In fact, I only launch Skype now when I have a scheduled call, rather than running it in the background. Since my Gmail is always open, it is a perfect way for my team members to reach me quickly – usually by IM first and then by video if further discussion is needed.

Here are some voice conferencing and video and voice chat solutions we’ve reviewed:

For a long time, I was singing the praises of Basecamp, but recently my web working company has outgrown it. I’m no longer flying solo, with a few virtual team members on a couple of projects. I now have a business partner and nine independent contractors working on multiple projects, so we’ve graduated to 5pm. Before deciding on 5pm, we looked at a number of project management solutions, many of which I’ve reviewed in the past. Before you rush over and get an account with the project management system that works for me, check out my post Project Management, Collaboration and How Our Brains Work.

I’m currently using doodle for scheduling but my calendaring system is a bit more complicated. Basically, I enter most of my schedule onto my Google Calendar, which is then synced to my iCal on my Mac, which syncs to my iPhone. But I also have my 30Boxes calendar in the mix, although it is beginning to seem redundant as I’ve gotten more used to Google Calendar. Regardless of the app you use, keeping track of your appointments and arranging schedules to sync with others is a major challenge, so having some good tools right away can be very handy.

These days, I can’t live without my cloud-based workspaces. I’m a Google Docs addict now, and after my business partner’s computer crashed this week, I think she may be a new convert. While some project management tools have collaborative white boards or workspaces, I still haven’t found a solution straightforward and functional as Google Docs.

That said, there are many other document sharing and collaborative space solutions we’ve reviewed in the past including:

I haven’t played around a lot with online file storage or backup and syncing. I’ve been using Apple Time Machine and Time Capsule to take care of my backup needs. In terms of big file storage or sharing, I’ve used YouSendIt to email anything larger than 1MB, but most of my web work doesn’t involved incredibly large files, and when it does, I tend to fall use an FTP site instead.

As you can see, there are many solutions to our daily web working challenges. Picking the right solutions for your new web working business sometimes means trying out several – particular if they are free or offer a free trial – to see which ones really work well for the way you like to work. Keep in mind that it’s important to have a scalable system so that, as you grow, you can upgrade easily without having to learn a new, more robust system.

What are some of the must-have applications you’ve found invaluable in your web work?